Krysia, anxious about the upcoming battle, elected to help Merlin with Arthur's armor. She tried to think if there was anything else they could have done, but their options were so very limited. She was polishing his helmet, not wanting to even look at the sword, feeling it would ruin their run of luck. Still, she was conscious of Merlin picking it up as someone entered.
Her stomach sank as she looked up to see Uther standing there, looking at the sword in Merlin's hands.
"That's a fine blade," Uther said, taking the sword from his hands, and Krysia turned, feeling slightly panicked.
"It's for Arthur," Merlin said.
"He won't be needing it today," Uther said, not looking at Merlin. "I will be taking Arthur's place."
Of all the things to go wrong, Krysia couldn't imagine how things had gone so wrong.
"But Sire," Merlin spluttered.
"Prepare me for battle."
Krysia and Merlin exchanged glances as she gripped the helmut. Technically, as this was the king, this was her responsibility, but she knew Merlin would take it upon himself.
"Arthur should be the one that fights today," Merlin said, and Krysia held her breath.
"The grievance was with me," Uther said, "the fight is mine."
Krysia set down the helmet and said, "Apologies, Sire, but I am not prepared to…. Your armor isn't ready."
"That'll do," Uther said, nodding at Arthur's armor. "It's likely to make little difference."
She realized he was preparing to die, and Merlin looked at her as she shrugged, beginning to prepare him, dressing him with the armor as instructed.
"Erm, I-I'll get your sword," Merlin said, turning to go.
"This will be fine," Uther said of the sword they had promised the dragon would be used by no one but Arthur.
No, no, no.
"No, Sire," Merlin said, a bit desperately. "You don't understand. Erm, that one was made specifically for Arthur."
"Who made it?" Uther asked, turning it over in his hands.
"Erm, er, Tom, the blacksmith," Merlin said, giving Krysia a desperate look, but she didn't know what to do. If she stuck out her neck, if she drew attention to herself and defied the king, she would likely end up dead before the day was over.
"It's worthy of a King," he said, examining the balance of the blade. He was right about that, but not this king. Not him.
"Sire," she said, in one last desperate attempt, "I beg you, if you are to have a chance it would be prudent to use a sword that you are used to, a sword you have practiced with. Knowing the weight of your swing is so important."
He shook his head and said, "No. It has almost perfect balance." He turned it over. "Tom's not the Royal Swordsmith. I'm surprised Arthur went to him."
Merlin said, "Oh, that was me. I felt he needed a better sword."
Uther looked up at him thoughtfully and said, "You show him the most extraordinary loyalty.
"That is my job, Sire."
"But beyond the line of duty," Uther said pointedly.
"Well…." Merlin looked uncomfortable, and Krysia knew how he felt. To have Uther looking at you with scrutiny was an awful experience, especially if you had secrets. "You could say...that there is a bond between us."
"I'm glad," Uther said. "Look after him."
Krysia watched him go, walking out to her vantage point, seeing Uther step into the arena.
This was wrong, all of it terribly wrong, and even the crowd murmured in shock and surprise to see Uther stepping out in Arthur's place.
"You can have what you came for," Uther said to the Black Knight. "The father, not the son."
Krysia gripped at a wooden beam and swallowed, feeling her whole body trembling. This couldn't happen, and yet short of magic, there was no way to prevent it, and certainly no way without sentencing Uther to death. That wasn't something she was prepared to do.
A guard removed Uther's cape and the fight began.
The sound of clashing swords was one that typically brought Krysia a kind of comfort, memories of childhood, learning to fight with her father with little daggers that they played with as swords, a sense of control her mother approved of. Now, though, now she felt the world spinning as the two swordsmen dueled, a captivating and well-balanced dance. Merlin came to stand behind Krysia, but she ignored him. There was nothing they could do but watch. He understood that.
Uther knocked off the helmet of his opponent partway through, revealing not a human face, exactly, but a kind of mummified face, and Krysia felt her body retch in revulsion. Several in the crowd reacted violently to the image as well.
Krysia held her breath when Uther lost his sword, gripping more tightly to the beam, feeling several small splinters of wood prick at her palms and the fleshy undersides of her fingers. She noticed them, but she ignored them as Uther fell to the ground. But he was not dead. The Knight's sword stuck in Uther's shield.
Uther, accomplished as a swordsman, reacted without hesitation at his good fortune, kicking his shield at the mummified man, retrieving the sword he was never supposed to use, and running his opponent through.
And the man exploded on the lethal contact with the blade, into thousands of pieces. It was spectacular, if very clearly supernatural, and as Uther removed his helmet the crowd cheered. No one seemed to question the nature of the win. No one was foolish enough to accuse Uther of witchcraft.
He tossed the sword to the ground in triumph, and Krysia, skilled with lifetimes of hiding in shadows when anything the least bit peculiar happened, melted away into the crowd before anyone could question her. She knew where to hide while Gaius cooled things down.
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Krysia had nearly fallen asleep when she heard the door to the root cellar open. She looked up across her candlelight and frowned at the shape that was Leon looking down at her.
"I couldn't find you anywhere else," he said, "but I still hoped I wouldn't find you here. It's been years. I thought you were past this."
As a child, she lied to Leon and told him that she went to the root cellar when she was very upset because it reminded her of the cool damp of the forest floor where she was found. A lie that made sense, like people finding comfort in things that reminded them of the womb. He sat beside her, brushing a bit of hair out of her face.
"I'm not sure what there is to be past," she said calmly. "The fact is, everyone sometimes needs a place to hide from everything. I told you a million times that I come here when I don't want to be found."
"You've never turned me away."
It was almost a plea, like if she started turning him away now, somehow it would crush him. Leon seemed so fragile sometimes, like a sturdy piece of glass. He could withstand a great deal, but everyone had their shattering point.
Krysia sat up and smiled at him weakly across the candle.
"I guess I won't start now."
Leon didn't ask her what was wrong. He would assume that either she was distressed by the duel as a concept, or by seeing the mummified head of the Black Knight during the duel. One positive to being a woman was that she could feign being disturbed by a great number of things that didn't actually bother her.
Instead, they sat in silence for a long time, enjoying the coolness and closeness of the space until Krysia asked him what time it had been when he came down to look for her.
"Not too long before the evening meal," he said.
Krysia gave a squeak.
"Gaius will be so upset if I'm late," she said.
"You're not serving Uther tonight," he said. "So what is the problem?"
"Promptness is important," she sighed, "even as the one eating."
She took the candle and let the way out of the cellar, not bothering to turn her head as she thanked Leon for closing the cellar and she hurried off to the physician's chambers as fast as her feet could safely carry her.
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Gaius did not look at his food all through dinner. Instead, he looked from Merlin to Krysia and back again, over and over. Like he was expecting one of them to say something.
"You know why I'm looking at you," he said.
"No," Merlin lied.
Krysia just stared at her potatoes, feeling guilt and shame that she couldn't manage to leave in the cellar.
"Uther told me you provided him with his sword today," Gaius said.
Merlin paused, then said, "It must have been a powerful blade to slay the dead."
Krysia looked up at Gaius, feeling small and afraid.
"We didn't," she said, before he could ask if they had enchanted the blade. "We didn't."
"No," Merlin said, "we didn't."
Gaius seemed surprised, and he asked, "Who did, then?"
"Wasn't me," Merlin said.
Krysia looked back down at her potatoes, poking them with her fork as Gaius said, "Shame. It saved the King's life, I'd have been very proud of you."
Krysia looked up at him, frowning.
"Proud?" she asked softly.
Growing up, there was never a time when he would have been proud of her for using magic.
"Never mind," Gaius said as Merlin's eyes lit up, but Krysia didn't miss the knowing smile he was wearing as Merlin went back to eating. Somehow, he knew they were responsible, and she couldn't wrap her mind around it, but he was proud of them.
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Krysia woke to Merlin shaking her. She groaned, turning over when she realized it was not yet morning, but Merlin kept shaking her.
"What do you want?" she said, hissing into the darkness.
"The dragon," Merlin said. "He spoke to me in my dream. What am I supposed to tell him, Krysia?"
Her stomach sank. She could tell him it was his problem, that the dragon only called him. But she knew she couldn't ask him to face this alone. She groaned again, standing.
"Let's go," she sighed.
The pair of them went to the now familiar tunnel corridor, finding the cave without difficulty. The Dragon was waiting for them.
"So," he asked, "does Arthur live?"
"Yes, the sword worked," Merlin said, not entirely lying. "It was incredible, amazing."
"As I promised," Kilgharrah said with some measure of satisfaction and pride. Krysia kicked Merlin lightly in the ankle. Lying to a dragon was a poor plan.
"But…" Merlin began nervously.
"Yes?"
Merlin seemed to shrink as he said, "Things didn't go quite according to plan. I mean, they did, except…. It wasn't Arthur who wielded the sword. It was Uther."
In a massive roar, the dragon cried out, "No!"
The cave trembled from the effort, and Krysia worried the whole castle must have felt it. Merlin cried out back, "We tried, but he just took it!"
The dragon roared again, and Krysia had had just about enough of this anger, which was bound to draw attention, surely the last thing any of them wanted.
"What did you expect us to do?" Krysia demanded. "Uther is king. We are servants. Even if we managed to keep him from using it, we would have died for our efforts."
Kilgharrah breathed through his nostrils, violent, angry exhales, but they seemed to calm him. After several moments, he said, "The sword was born of the old magic. You have no idea of its power. In the hands of Uther, it will bring only evil."
"We'll get it back," Merlin said.
"You have betrayed me," the dragon snarled. "You are not ready to be trusted."
Krysia felt the sting of that comment, as Merlin surely did, and Merlin said, "We'll bring it to you. You can destroy it."
"What is made cannot be unmade."
"So what do you want us to do?" Merlin cried.
"Take the sword far from here and place it where no mortal man can ever find it."
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She waited outside the city walls, letting Merlin out when he showed her the bundle that held the sword. She had suggested she steal it from the armory, but Merlin was right. She would be less conspicuous leaving the city at night, and he would be less conspicuous moving about the armory at night.
"We aren't going where I think we're going, are we?" Merlin asked as she led him out through the woods.
"A place where no mortal man can ever find it," Krysia repeated. "We promised that we would put the sword somewhere no mortal could find it. Where better than the place no mortal can look upon and live?"
Merlin grumbled that he wasn't fully sure that Avalon fit that description, as they had definitely looked upon it, and definitely were still alive, but Krysia ignored him. She was going to get something right before dawn, and if she had to knock him out and take the sword to Avalon by herself, chuck it in, and run, she would.
After several minutes of being ignored, however, Merlin either got the hint or grew tired of talking with no response.
The reached the lake, the very lake where they had saved Arthur from the sidhe, and Krysia, watched Merlin unbundle the sword. It glinted in the light, almost tempting them, almost asking them not to throw it away.
"If no mortal man can ever reach it," Merlin said, "what happens if we need it again? I mean, when the dragon decides we can be trusted."
Krysia had been asking herself the same thing, but she shook her head and said, "We have looked on the gates of Avalon and lived, remember? Maybe we'll be able to retrieve it somehow. We've been in that lake before."
Merlin nodded, took a deep breath, and threw the sword and hard, as far as he could. They watched it fall into the water with a surprisingly small disturbance of the lake, and Krysia imagined the rest of its descent through, to the bottom of the lake. Ironic, she thought, that the lake now holding what could one day again be Arthur's salvation was the same lake where he very nearly met the end of his life.
"Come on," she said. "I need to get some sleep tonight. I suppose you do, too."
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Krysia was in her dream, and she knew it. What she didn't know was where the man was. She was certain he should be there, the man she kept dreaming about. She stood at the window of an unfamiliar room in Camelot, looking out on the city. She could see the wall beyond the courtyard, but only the very tops of the trees.
A door behind her opened, and she turned to see the man she was expecting, with his brown hair, his beard, and surprisingly tired eyes.
"You've pushed yourself too hard again," she heard herself say. "Arthur doesn't need you every time."
"You know that he does," he answered with a smile, rougish but tired. "Who's better?"
"It's not a question of that," she said, crossing to him in a few short steps, helping him disrobe. "But no one is as effective exhausted as they are rested. You need to have nights off. It's nearly light."
"We've a few hours," he said, tracing the curve of her neck with rough fingers. "I take it you haven't slept, either?"
"How can I, without you beside me?"
He smiled at her, and it seemed that half his tiredness was lifted from his face in that single change. He leaned in and kissed the corner of her lip, then her upper lip, then her cheek. Krysia felt her hands trace his torso, the almost familiar path across his chest, to feel the muscles where she knew they must be, to count the bumps of his spin as she ran a hand down the center of his back. She knew every inch of his skin. He pressed his lips to her neck and a thrill ran through her.
"Only a couple of hours for you to sleep before daybreak," she whispered, but she wasn't thinking about her words. She was thinking about the sensation of his teeth at her neck, playfully nipping at the skin. He worked his way back to her jaw, over to her chin as her hands slid up into his hair, feeling it slide between her fingers.
"Who needs sleep?" he said softly, guiding her toward their bed. "Not us."
Krysia opened her mouth, perhaps to protest, but he pressed his lips to hers and even in the dream she felt dizzy, her whole body pulsating with excitement, with the promise of what these nighttime dreams meant. Sensations she had never felt in the waking world, never thought of feeling, flooded through her in these dreams, with this man, like a rushing river. If she focused enough, she could even smell him, smell the sweat off his body, the dirt, the scent of the horse he had ridden before he came to her. She could taste his breath and hear so plainly the breathing, the panting, the small sounds he made in the base of his throat when she nibbled on his bottom lip.
He used trembling hands to move the hair off her forehead and onto the pillow, and then he held her gaze with blazing eyes as his fingers fumbled with the laces of her nightgown. Krysia almost said his name, she could feel it, a sigh on her on her lips.
She was opening her eyes and Merlin stood over her, shaking her gently.
"Daybreak," he said. "We've got work to do."
Krysia sat up. The name, any inkling of it, had slipped from her completely. It was gone.
A/N: Review Prompt: What do you think the dragon makes of Krysia? She often only speaks to him when he makes her angry. Does he do it on purpose to goad her?
-C